The first thing Kevin Gibson did after returning to his house, torn apart by a powerful tornado Monday, was pull an American flag and a temporary flagpole from the corner of his partially standing garage.HAGERSTOWN, Md. – An Army private charged in the biggest security breach in U.S. history is making his pretrial confinement an issue in his court-martial.
Pfc. Bradley Manning is expected to testify during a pretrial hearing starting Tuesday at Fort Meade. He has never spoken publicly about his nine months at the Marine Corps brig in Quantico, Va. in 2010 and 2011.
Manning is seeking dismissal of all charges. He claims his solitary confinement, sometimes with no clothing, was illegal punishment.
The Defense Department maintains that Manning’s treatment conformed to his classification as a maximum-custody detainee who posed a threat of injury to himself or others.
Manning is now in medium-security confinement at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas.
He is accused of sending hundreds of thousands of classified documents to the secret-sharing website WikiLeaks.
